The Diego Diaries: Skills 1 (dd3 459)
-0-Ops Center, Autobot City, Mars
"We have a situation." Prowl glanced at Ratchet. "A bomb went off outside the door of your apartment, Ratchet."
The room levitated to its feet as everyone began to run for the door. They flooded out and hurried onward meeting Ironhide and Blackjack as they were walking in. Swarming around them, some of them hurried onwarc.
When Ratchet met them, he took Prowler from Ironhide and spun to put the infant into the surprised servos of Twin Twist. "Take care of him." Ratchet then grabbed Ironhide. "Come on. Both of you."
The two didn't skip a beat. They ran out with the rest of the mob.
-0-Mare Tranquilitatis
The sound of a huge boom could be heard, then the sound of things shattering. The mechs across the hallway from apartment 24 weren't home. Neither was anyone else on the floor which was fortunate. The blast was a concentrated one that made short work of the door, walls on both sides of the hallway and furnishings in the corridor. Art on the walls and etched images were destroyed. Fire erupted as smoke poured in all directions.
By the time the senior officers were making their way through the baffled noontime crowd the fire department had arrived and teams were going up with Inferno as Field Supervisor and Director of the Public Emergency Response Team commanding all actions. As they reached the lobby they were joined by an intensely upset off duty Red Alert, half the Watch officers in the Metro area as well as Drift and Springer. They gathered on the sidewalk in front of the building out of the way of the furiously engaged fire teams.
"What do you want to do here?" Springer asked Inferno who was walking onward to follow fire teams up to suppress the flames.
"Wait here, Springer. I'll call you. I put in a call for the forensics investigators. When Sky comes send him and his team up. We're going to try to preserve the scene as best we can." Inferno then walked into the building to disappear swiftly up the stairs.
Springer turned around to watch as Ratchet and Ironhide caught up. They stood grimly together as the professionals hurried about their business.
Prime was grim as well. "I want this buttoned up. I want the forensics yesterday. I want the surveillance data gathered and run by you, Elita. We have to have hard evidence on this or we will be in trouble."
Elita nodded, then she and Chromia went inside to go to the sub basement where the security equipment was kept.
The sounds were louder than usual it seemed, then Springer turned to Prime. "We need to do a survey of this building, Optimus. This may not be the only bomb."
Optimus nodded. "Get the bomb squad."
Springer sent the call. With Drift in tow, they walked inside to wait.
Prime turned to Ratchet. "Someone wanted you out of your apartment and they waited until you left."
"What the frag is going on here?" Ironhide asked glancing from Prime to Ratchet and back again.
"Someone called to tell me to go to Darkness and help with the refit. No one did. Optimus sent Drift and Springer over so I could come to the Ops Center. When I did, this happened."
"Someone blew up my house? Fraggers! I'll snuff them myself." Ironhide stood quivering with outrage.
"And my genitor's house. Maybe yours, too, Ali," Ratchet said grimly. "I don't even want to think about the couple across the hallway."
Everyone nodded, then waited grimly for the news to come back down to them. As they did, the bomb squad arrived and disappeared into the building.
-0-Ops Center
"What do I do?" Twin Twist held a tiny sparkling in his servos, a baby encased in a yellow Seeker bag with a kitten on the front of it. The baby was looking at all of them, his tiny face the only part of himself free to express anything.
"That's a tiny thing," another bot said.
Bots who were there waiting for their shift crowded around Twin Twist to stare at the baby. "What do you think you should do, Twin?"
He looked at the speaker with a dazed expression. "I don't know."
Neither did anyone else.
-0-Inside the building
Springer and Drift stepped off the elevator and walked to the locked room nearby. It was in the back of the vast expanse of the sub floor which held all of the technical business of the tower. Entering the code, they walked inside as lights came on automatically. The computers and data center for the building which controlled all of its environmental duties and ran the security and electronics systems hummed away as normal.
Springer entered his codes to the data port and waited. A monitor flashed on and a voice spoke. "Enter your data."
He did. He put in a call for all of the security imaging and reporting for the period running from three joors prior to the bomb's detonation until it finally did. Running it through his processor, he watched several hours of data in seconds. There was nothing on the material that showed anyone who didn't belong in the build doing anything out of the ordinary. He concentrated on the hallway where Ratchet's apartment was and the bend where the apartment butted onto Ravel and Tie Down's home.
The data didn't show anything happening. It showed both Drift and Springer coming to the apartment, Ratchet opening the door and the three leaving. Prior to that, no one who didn't belong was anywhere near the place.
"They either hid it before today or they can manipulate images to a great degree. Even Elita and Chromia didn't find a flaw in their work," Drift said glancing at Springer.
He nodded. :Springer to Inferno:
:Inferno here:
"What's the word?: Springer asked as his party listened in.
"We've put out the fires. There is a huge blast zone that we're mapping. Lots of damage, Springer. No one was home. We'll do a report and send it to you and everyone else:
:We've run the video but its clean: Springer replied. "We're going to sweep the building. If you find anything, call me:
:Got ya. Inferno out:
Springer turned to Drift and two others with him. "Let's sweep this place up." They followed him out the door and into the building to look for more bombs.
They wouldn't find any.
-0-Ops Center
"What do I do? Put him down?" Twin Twist looked around.
Prowler looked at Twin Twist. He was snug as a bug in a rug so all he could do was glance around with his optics. He glanced this way and that with his tiny blue optics watching as the big unfamiliar bots fussed over him. "Tweet?"
Everyone froze, then stared at the infant lying in a bag on Twin Twist's servo. "He talked."
Everyone nodded.
"He's cute." -Twin Twist grinning slightly.
Everyone nodded.
"You want to hold him?" -Twin Twist, hopeful
No one nodded.
-0-Trine
They stood at the window staring down at the street as fire trucks drove past going to somewhere. "I wonder what's going on?" Sideswipe asked.
"I don't know. Call someone, Blue," Sunstreaker asked glancing over his shoulder at the winger who had flopped down on the couch with Dawg.
"Why me?" he asked to be ornery.
"Because." -both twins.
He grinned, then paused. :Prowl:
:What?:
:What's going on? The twins asked me to ask you:
There was a pause, then Ratchet was on. :Someone tried to blow up my house, Blue. Have the twins come over with you. We're in the courtyard of the tower:
Bluestreak sat a moment in intense surprise, then stood. "Come on. You have permission." Then he walked to the door exiting swiftly.
The twins looked at each other, then hurried to the door and beyond. Dawg was too busy scratching behind his ear, his tongue lolling out and Bob was too slow. The door closed before he could exit with them. He sat down and leaned against it waiting for his gods to return from wherever they'd gone. It would be a long wait for a tiny confused baby with no sense of time.
-0-At the tower
By the time that the trine had arrived the fire teams were gathering their gear to leave. The bomb squad was on the seventh floor at the moment going door to door checking everywhere for anything.
Springer walked out to speak to Optimus when Sunstreaker and Sideswipe paused behind Bluestreak.
They looked grim. "What's going on, Ada?" Sunstreaker asked.
Ratchet turned to them. "Someone tried to blow us up."
They stared at him, then the others. "What's going on, Springer?" Sunstreaker asked with the 'look' forming on his handsome face.
"We're sweeping the building. They just finished the seventh floor with nothing out of the ordinary. We've gone over the security data and the preliminary scrutiny finds nothing," the big Wrecker said.
Optimus nodded. "I want what you can find. Have Sciences go over the images. How much can you salvage?"
"All of it. The servers in the sub basement aren't affected. The cameras in the corridor are toasted," Springer replied. "We can pull as much as you want but there's nothing there. I don't know how they did it but we're not facing amateurs."
Prime considered that. "Have Perceptor and Wheeljack been notified?"
Prowl nodded. "They have," he said quietly.
"We know who did this," Sideswipe said coldly.
"We will do this by the book," Optimus said. "We have room in the prison for freelancers. I hope I have made my point."
They looked at him with cold optics, then nodded ever so slightly.
Ratchet felt slightly better even as he worried about the contents of their house. He thought about the art that belonged to their family, the pictures and bric-a-brac that made their house home. All of the things that the infants had made were about the apartment for everyone to see and enjoy.
It was maddening.
-0-Ops Center
"Thanks," Twin Twist said as one of the bots who was a father found the box bed that Prowl still kept in his office. He'd gotten it and a blanket, then brought it out. Making up the little bed, he took the little bag of baby and lay Prowler down in it. He lay looking up at them, then smiled.
Brilliantly.
"Wow. That's a cute little thing," someone said.
"He is. I like his chevron. I didn't know they came that small," someone else said.
Twin Twist nodded "I know. He looks just like Prowl."
"Ratchet is nuts," a big bot who was coming on duty shortly said with a grin. "All of them look like Ironhide. This one is harder to notice but he does, too."
Everyone nodded.
"On him it looks cute," Twin Twist said.
Everyone nodded again.
-0-The 24/25th apartment of the 24th floor
Sky with three other Seekers walked through the mess looking with their expert optics for anything that would give them a hint of what had happened. The blast had occurred in front of Ratchet's door, the apartment that was once apartment 25. It had shattered the door, both sides of the wall around the door, the walls of the apartment across from it and everything down the way in terms of decoration and fixture.
They'd found fragments of the device but nothing more than that. It had been so complete in its self destruction that it was included in the toll. Someone who'd made it really knew what they were doing. The report would have big holes in it when it was compiled.
-0-City Administration, Metroplex, Autobot City, Mars
"Fenix."
He looked up from a stack of work that he was getting ready for presentation to Caro. "What?"
A big mech walked in and closed the door. He sat on the chair beside the desk. "There was a disturbance just now."
"What happened?" Fenix asked as he sat back in his chair.
"Someone tried to blow up Ratchet's apartment," the big mech replied.
Fenix sat a moment digesting that news, then nodded. "Who is doing this?"
"I don't know but I'm trying to figure it out," the mech said.
Fenix nodded. "This is not going to be good. Something tells me that we aren't going to be able to control this."
The mech nodded. "You have that right. We better go through the ranks to find someone with these skills. I don't think that Prime is going to be able to find anything out from the scene."
Fenix considered that, then nodded. "Find out who this is. They have skills we can use."
The mech nodded, then rose and left.
Fenix moved to the window to stare at the street below. It had been cordoned off with only emergency vehicles going through. He wondered if anyone had been hurt. He knew they would be hated if anyone thought they were responsible.
It was a disquieting thing wondering about it. But in his gut he knew that someone on his side of the line was responsible. They'd thrown down to the Prime. It was on. He stood by the window watching the buzz outside with a small bit of dread. It surprised him that he had it.
-0-TBC October 4, 2013
Happy Birthday, My Sweet Timmy.
NOTES: Leoness, I AM SO SORRY! Animals are consolation for the crap of life. I hug you over your sweet baby. The only thing that will help you feel better is time. Titania sounded wonderful. I'm so happy to help divert you in a tough time. HUGS!